I guess you're against free services then. I for one am happy for social networks and any other website to have adverts down the side of their page or a banner at the top in exchange for services I use so frequently.

I am against being tracked. If the advertisements were just relevant to the content of the site I was on, and not based on what the advertising server thinks I am interested based on it tracking my browsing habits, I wouldn't mind them.

So what? Just because you are against it does mean it is harmful. I am happy to be tracked, and am happy to reap the benefits of sites and ads that automatically tailor themselves to my wants. You may be happy in your paranoid little cocoon, but I don't see how you are better off in any way.

i am also against tracking. and according to my logic, things that im against, should be destroyed along with the human nodes, that reproduce them.Also, the harm isnt really necessary, the possibility of harm is enough. One cannot misuse/sell to government thugs the data that one doesn't have... =)

You may want to form part of the matrix and let the overlords manage you, not everybody does.

Everybody screws up when they're a teenager, it's all part of the deal.

This is the first generation that will have all their screw-ups stored in a cross-referenced database for future reference. A database that "connected" people will be able to manipulate/edit for their own benefit.

Not being in the database will be even worse - employers are already demanding access to people's Facebook accounts.

You're missing something though - the fact that everyone's indiscretions will be available will mean that indiscretions will matter less. In a world where everyone's got nude pics out there or whatever, nobody will give a fuck because giving a fuck is essentially risking mutually assured destruction, or, if they happen to be someone without easily discoverable dirt, they'll wind up being seen as a busybody asshole for bothering to try to shame someone.

Hell, the way tech is moving, we aren't that far from people being able to trivially find out anything they want, essentially instantly, about anyone they happen to run across with nothing more than a picture and a smartphone/watch/device.

For me, I learned a long time ago that rather than waste my energy fighting a losing (already lost?) battle, I would instead try to learn how to not give much of a fuck if people feel compelled to "violate my privacy" and how to mitigate the damage that could be done by a malicious person who chose to do so. 90% of this learning was becoming confident enough to just shrug and say "what's your point?" when nosy people try to shame me, and the other 10% was doing my best to ensure that the people who matter in my life aren't assholes.

You're missing something though - the fact that everyone's indiscretions will be available will mean that indiscretions will matter less.

That doesn't really follow, though. What will happen is that we'll have a larger class of people who will never be fit for high level jobs, politics, certain professions because of their actions as teenagers. Kids in the "right" class will be taught not to make these mistakes or their parents will pay to have them properly covered up.

Our society may talk the talk, but it isn't really tolerant of indiscretions, youthful or otherwise. In the same way, charging more and more people with felonies for minor victimless crimes doesn't make people look less harshly on felons; it just makes a larger class of unemployable felons.

I disagree. In 1992 Clinton had to say he didn't inhale, and now we have a president who said that was the whole point and happily admits he dabbled. We've gone from it being an absolute career killer for any politician to even be *suspected* of being gay to it not being THAT big a deal if someone is openly gay. On stuff that people used to be scandalized by, we've gotten better because it's become more common to the point where people are more easily able to relate. So, I really don't think that the same

You're missing something though - the fact that everyone's indiscretions will be available will mean that indiscretions will matter less. In a world where everyone's got nude pics out there or whatever, nobody will give a fuck because giving a fuck is essentially risking mutually assured destruction, or, if they happen to be someone without easily discoverable dirt, they'll wind up being seen as a busybody asshole for bothering to try to shame someone.

you might be right, but it won't come soon enough to help this generation.

Except "this generation" isn't some monolithic block of people. Some will get fucked over by their openness, some will thrive from it, just like anything else.

I don't go about broadcasting my information, but I have made the conscious choice to accept that ANYTHING about me is potentially knowable by anyone, and I have made a conscious effort to arrange my life in such a way that even if my deepest, darkest secrets were known to the entire planet, nothing terribly important to me would be all that negativel

Define harmful please.If a store owner sees me lurking around the high end laptops and comes to me to help me (and his income of course) I think that that is not 'harmful'.If a server is tracking my every move around the web for years on end. Not so nice. Not harmful either, but annoying... yes, certainly.If a company is tracking my every move around the web for years on end and sells this to who knows who, and has a 'privacy' policy of 24 pages in fontsize 5. Mmmmnot harmful in the sense that it will harm my health or quality of life, but back OFF!!If a company is tracking my every move around the web for years on end and sells this to my future boss who wants to inquire my personal habits. This is harmful because it might deprive me of income (and with that food, medical treatments and so on). Yes harmful.

Privacy is not about harmful vs harmless. 25 Shades of harm I would say:-)A lot of us here remember the time before internet and cell phones. When I wanted to know about herpes I would go to the library and look it up in a book on STD's. No one would ever know (to a certain degree of course). Now this search queries are logged and stored and available to the highest bidder. That is a completely different story!The teens of today have no clue whatsoever how life would be without the web, social media, cellphones and the integration of all these. They therefore make different choices. Surprised? Not me. They have no 0. No baseline to what is intrusion and what is just fine.

"teen social media users do not express a high level of concern about third-parties (such as businesses or advertisers) accessing their data"

We worry about business, which is an irrelevancy, when compared to government tracking everything, which has been repeatedly shown, well, just look at history. The levels of misuse are not even close. Wherefore this rhetorically virulant boogeyman about companies, when government does magnitudes worse?

What business gathers, government can rifle through. It doesn't even require a warrant, unless the business refuses to cooperate. Which they ain't gonna do. It would put those sweet government contracts at risk.

If business doesn't gather it, government will have to do so for its own damn self. Which burdens their budget and can at least in theory be challenged in court.

I don't know about you, but when I'm in the car and a commercial comes on the radio I change the channel. When a commercial comes on TV I pee and get another beer. The Illinois Times is a free weekly dead-tree newspaper I read every week and never look at the ads.

The trouble with advertisers is they're so damned obnoxious, especially on the web with the popups and popunders and flashy, distracting bullshit, often with sound. They slow page loads to a crawl with thei

That's not entirely accurate. You seem to be one of two, 'cause your twin brother said the same thing up there (^^^). Or maybe you're so happy to have ads down the side of the page or a banner at the top in exchange for services you use so frequently, that you're repeating yourself.

Just saying.

I guess you're against free services then. I for one am happy for social networks or any website to have ads down the side of the page or a banner at the top in exchange for services I use so frequently.

Second assumption: Your unwanted 'adverts' won't threaten your life for being (positions)

Well, that escalated quickly.

That's exactly the point. It *could* escalate quickly - particularly since it's being done by stupid computers with keywords, not thoughtful people reading a discussion. Imagine the "flash crash" of the stock market, or the publicity flare about a celebrity's comment, applying to YOUR employment. "We understand you're a (worst possible undesirable of whatever type), so you're fired."

Your data is their ASSET.Business exploit assets in whatever possible way.Your assumption that they will be only be used for targeted ads is naive.Your naivety has been noted.As my paranoid convoluted thinking has.Have a nice day.

You guys seem to think you're the most interesting person in the world and everybody else is just dying to get a scoop on your private life.

Does the same apply to people who don't want cameras installed in every room of their house? After all, saying that you want a bit of privacy must mean that you think you're the most interesting person in the world!

Not everyone is concerned about just their own privacy, either.

Why are you so afraid? How is that so detrimental to your well-being?

Why would you be afraid of cameras being installed in your bathroom? What you do in there is completely normal and mundane, so why worry? People typically like to have privacy. A privacy invasion doesn't need to destroy someone in ord

So there's an elephant in the room that you refuse to admit to - there's a difference between recording what people normally see and putting cameras that follow you where you're normally alone and unseen.

There is no elephant int he room that I refuse to admit; I never said they were the same to begin with. The person I replied to said acted as if merely desiring privacy is an insane notion, and that he/she couldn't understand why anyone would do such a thing. In that regard, being spooked about cameras in private places is no different than being spooked about other privacy violations; either way, you simply desire privacy.

Some people seem to declare that certain types of privacy are 'worthless' without rea

You guys seem to think you're the most interesting person in the world and everybody else is just dying to get a scoop on your private life.

No. We think it's a problem because it doesn't take any effort. Paparrazi invest time and money waiting to take photos of celebrities' private lives because someone pays them for it. Business doesn't have to work as hard; it just has to skim through the constant stream of information passing through the financial and legal and communication channels as it passes by. And it's not interested in *me*; it's a totally random fishing expedition in which I might get caught up by accident in an *incorrect* conn

> Will an employer be able to find dirt about you? Sure. Will it be worse> than what they'd have on everybody else? Probably not. Why are> you so afraid? How is that so detrimental to your well-being?

Assume that you're an HR type or a firm that screens job applicants or or insurance applicants on a contract basis. Let's assume that you go 5 years, and find no dirt on any applicant. the screener's employer will decide that there's no point in paying these people, and let them go. On the other hand,

that's why for many databases I'm an afghan of 13, - or a student of 93 yo if adult is needed -currently retired from aeronautics (or whichever comes first in the drop down list), living at 1, GOTNOADDRESS st IGOTNOTOWN, or whatever. And I give false answers to any obvious commercial data gathering (but I never lie about my keyboard preferences on slash polls - if they still exists)

No, scratch that. I'm sure that evenyoudon't want your medical-insurance company to know how many Cheetos you eat...

And this is exactly the problem. Anyone who's had insurance for a number of years, and paid attention, knows that they take the baseline and raise it to the highest profit, giving you "discounts" if you not only qualify with rediculous exceptions, but also beg for them to recognize the fact. So if some beancounter decides that eating more than 2 bags of cheetos per month correlates to a 5% increase in heart attack risk, they go ahead and raise the rate of 2+ bag of cheetos eaters by 5%. That alone would of

It is a bad decision because once the information is out there you lose control of it.

What you think is hip and cool now will go out of vogue. It always does. Some things become actively negative, rather than just embarrassing fashions of a bygone time.

How would you feel if you put your deepest secrets out there, "protected" by the privacy settings, for only your closest friends and then had those secrets exposed, resulting in ridicule or harm to you?

It depends upon how you look at advertising. I would argue that advertising is meant to shape the tastes of consumers to reflect the interests of businesses. Given that this data is being collected to make advertising more effective, i.e. to make the shaping of our tastes more effective, I do see this as something to worry about.

Is that what you really think it's about? Let me tell you about a project I was involved in a while back...

There's a website where a customer could go to, to look up information about products. These products are basically services, so you need a contract and such to get them, so after you've perused the website you're going to either need to call, or a salesman is going to have to find out who you are and call you.

There's a vendor out there (Actually many of them) that sells a service where you install some of their software and give them various API access to your site. When someone visits the site, this software logs the session, logs EVERY bit of information about your visit and stores it. Now, keep in mind, they do not know who you are likely. You can create an account on the site and if you do they have your info, but likely they don't. There's a lot of psychological manipulation involved in getting you to log in and reveal who you are, but if you don't, that's ok to. They track your IP, your web browser, where your IP originates from, your OS, the time you spent on the site, everything you looked at, etc... from all of this they give you an ID. When you visit the next time, they know who you are... it's very accurate. I was so amazed by the process I tested it and tried to trick it. Even Tor didn't matter. It used that as a data point to identify me the next time I logged in.

So now you're visitor 12548... but they still don't know who you are. This is where the outside vendor or "partner" comes in. They have thousands of customers. All of which have thousands or tens of thousands of hits per day. So now you go to a different site, fall for their psychological manipulation to create an account... Boom, they have your email address, possibly more if you provided your name and number. But the fact of the matter is, if they have your email address they almost assuredly have the rest of your personal info with just a few simple queries. This is all automatic, it happens very fast, all of that companies customers get relayed the data. Then this data comes in as a "Sales lead" creates a ticket and gets shipped to a salesman who calls you. Not only does the salesman have your name, number and where you work, he knows just about every site you've visited in the past 30 days that's affiliated with the company that does the data mining, and the salesman knows everything about what you've been doing on his website.

Now he's ready to make a sales pitch and probably knows more about your habits that your wife does. Is that ok with you? Think of a financial institution that knows you've been looking for a loan to consolidate your debt... and they know all about your plans to go to Hawaii next month... or prediliction for furry porn? or anything else?

This isn't about serving up targeted adds. If it were, it wouldn't be a problem.

Please explain why the print media had made billions of dollars all without the ability to track its readership? Same for magazines they are loaded with advertisements that interest its readers. Why must advertiser spy on us without permission? And they are advertising stuff that doesn't even remotely mirror the web sites content. As long as they try to spy on what i do say buy without my explicit permission i will block all attempts to do so.

I'd argue that the behavior described can't (without doing serious violence to the details) be usefully dismissed as 'making bad decisions'.

Yes, unfortunately, Kids Today show no more signs of being Valiant Defenders of Privacy than did people yesterday. Outside of a principled-but-largely-ineffective minority, nobody ever has. Unshockingly enough, they've largely succumbed to the nigh-inevitable when it comes to advertisers and analytics creeps watching everything they do.

On the other hand, they do appear to be taking some degree of protective action against authority figures who are overt enough to be obviously worth evading(parents, principles, coaches, etc.) and dumb enough to be evadable(If you plan on using the internet in a remotely ordinary fashion without Google, Lexis-Nexis, your friendly local telco, and possibly a three-letter-agency or two, good luck with that. If you are trying to communicate with your friends without your parents catching on to what exactly you are drinking, that's still possible).

It is clear that no one read TFA. This isn't about teens revealing too much information on social networks, but how teens adapt to public communication channels by "cloak[ing] their messages either through inside jokes or other obscure references". It is darn clever, and something teens have been doing, well, since before I was a teenager.

The Oak tree doesn't have his date of birth, or parent's address. Even better, no-one can pick up their phone and see the Oak tree (probably). Really great, is that no-one can search what is written on other Oak trees.

I got my first webpage at 15. And there wasn't a lot of content around at the time.

Suffice to say, if I ever entertained notions of running for political office, they were long since dashed.

This is much of why I feel so free to share my feelings here. My attitude is already well-known and a matter of public record. (Although since the internet archive operates based on the current robots.txt, our once-significant site is not available to the public...)

Yesterday, I watched an old episode of "The Rockford Files" from 1977 -- a serious two-parter about a private consortium committing various crimes while setting up a secret computer system to track consumers. The episode ended with a black screen and a chilling message from NBC:

"Secret information centers, building dossiers on individuals, exist today. You have no legal right to know abut them, prevent them, or sue for damages. Our liberty may well be the price we pay for permitting this to continue unchecked -- Member, U.S. Privacy Protection Commission."

I know the episode your talking about and remember the message. It's probably no coincidence that Nixon split his guts to David Frost in 1977. The FBI under J.E. Hoover had been spying on US citizens for decades, they routinely infiltrated and sabotaged non violent groups such as anti-war protesters, as an example of how absurd it became they had a huge dossier on John Lennon. I'm not an American but I was 17 at the time and watergate was a huge affair, it was clear that the kind of thing that happened at the Watergate hotel was routine, the scandal was followed by some significant legislation on what data government could collect, and under what circumstances domestic groups could be infiltrated.
It doesn't seem to have worked, I would not be at all surprised if someone found a similar dossier on the "Dixie Chicks" buried somewhere in Homeland security's basement.

As an Aussie I would like to give Letterman a pat on the back for what he's been doing with his "stooge of the day" segment, regardless of your views on gun control, the point he keeps hammering home is that all the stooges voted in direct opposition to the expressed wishes of an overwhelming majority of their constituents. Every single stooge on Letterman's show is a specific example of an individual politician doing their bit to "steal your liberty". Sure politicians should lead rather than follow the opinion polls, but when they are so out of kilter with them (in some cases taking a position opposed by over 90% of voters), they have some 'splaining to do.

Stumbling about upright and balancing are two very different things. I have two small children (3 and 1) and they can walk, run, hop, and trip over their own feet. Hell, they can fall down while standing still. Never underestimate a small child's ability to simultaneously demonstrate a remarkable ability to climb and dance around unimpeded and then trip over a dust mite.

Never put anything online you wouldn't want you mum to. Goes doubly so for social networks.

...mum to see.

Well, to be fair, the original wording also applies. As in: "would I want my Mom posting pics of her doing bellybutton shooters with the local cheerleading squad? No? Hmm...better not post that one..."

Bigger trouble is: idiot 'friends' who oh-so-helpfully post their own pics of you doing stupid things, or even normal things that you don't necessarily want the entire world to see. I make sure that my friends know that I'm not okay with that, and so far it hasn't been a problem, cause I have good friends.

There is nothing wrong with sharing personal information if a person desire to do so, what is wrong is the exploitation of them. This is what we should be enraged about.

There is something wrong about sharing personal information with people who will obviously exploit it, and when you share personal information on the internet you are sharing it with everyone, which includes the exploiters. I do agree that we should also be enraged about the exploiters as well, and squash them when legally possible, but in a free society you will find a minority of people who take freedom as a license to be scum.

I used to think this would happen over the next 100 years, but it sounds like it'll be just a generation or two before it does.

In the future, it will become the social norm to expose all your private details in public, where government and industry can scoop it up and record it forever. If you maintain a sense of privacy, you'll be thought of as weird. Why wouldn't you want to declare your love of Oreo brand sandwich cookies and that you're in the 20K - 30K income bracket and in the 18 - 25 female age demog